An interview with one of the world's biggest stars in music, Snoop Dogg

Q&A with Snoop Dogg

With over 30 million albums sold worldwide, 16 Grammy award nominations and 3 number one hits, Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr or as we all know him as Snoop Dogg has already cemented his place as one of the greatest rappers of all time. Recently, Rolling Stone magazine caught up with the rapper in an interview session.

Rolling Stone: First off Snoop, thank you for being able to take some of your time out and be able to sit with us for this interview. Now starting off with my first question, just take me back to your early life and childhood, what was it like? how was your relationship with your family?.

Snoop Dogg: Well firstly it's a pleasure to be here and growing up in the 70s and 80s in Long Beach, California was hard for me because nothing came easy. My father left me and my family when I was only 3 years old and so I grew up without a dad which was hard so therefore the burden on me was increased as I had to take on a bigger responsibility in my family and assume the role of "the man". Where I came from, there was plenty of violence, gangs, killings and shootings and many other things, it was bad.

Rolling Stone: How did you get into the world of rap music? How and when exactly did you fall in love with it?.

Snoop Dogg: At a young age, I started to sing in churches and play the piano so I had a little music background before rapping but once I entered 6th grade I just somehow found this interest in rapping and started to rap, I felt like I had a good natural feel for it.

Rolling Stone: As you started your career, you began to work with Dr Dre and members of one the greatest hip hop groups the NWA, how did this shape your music, personality and career?.

Snoop Dogg: Shout out to ma man Dre, he is a big reason of where I am today as he brought me to auditions and welcomed me into the big bad world of hip-hop and showed me around and working with him on a lot of my music he really influenced me on what my music should be about and has really been a huge part of my career. Also The D.O.C is another man who's been a huge influence, he taught me how to structure my music properly and has shaped my abilties into become the freestyle rapper I am today.

Rolling Stone: Your first major hit of your career was the song "Who am I?". Why do you think this song became such a major hit in your career?. What does this song reflect about you?.

Snoop Dogg: I put so much heart, soul and pride into making this song and writing the lyrics. This reflects so much about me and my life growing up in the rural neighbourhoods of Long Beach and going into drugs at a young age as I had no choice. This song represents everything of the hood of Long Beach... money, drugs, poverty, violence, black on black shootings...everything.

Rolling Stone: With your music, what effect do you try to give your audience with it? What message are you trying to send?.

Snoop Dogg: I basically shout out all my music to all ma peeps in Long Beach and in California who are going through the hardships that I once did. I want them to know that there's always hope and that you can get out of Compton and all these places and live a better life, you are not automatically gonna be forced into drugs like how I did or gangs and crimes. I don't want the people who live in the "hood" to make the same mistakes as I did by going into drugs.

Rolling Stone: Lastly, how is you latest album going? 

Snoop Dogg: My album is goin good, it's gonna be a solo album and I am working with Pharrell on it and we are making good progress. The time of release is still an unknown.

Rolling Stone: Well this concludes our interview and it was so great to have you, thank you for being here.

Snoop Dogg: My pleasure, anytime and peace out.

Blog Post #2, Mother Tongue by Amy Tan

I was reading an essay in class earlier this week called Mother Tongue written by Amy Tan, the story/essay is about the author Amy (A fluent English speaker) who discusses her life so far growing up under a Chinese mother in the United States of America who speaks "fractured" or "broken" English. Fractured or broken English refers to limited English or poor English. A major thing Amy Tan in her story talks about is how the English speaking so therefore Western world is starting to stereotype English speakers who come from different countries and ethnicity. Basically she is stating that Non Native English speakers are being stereotyped and overlooked and not really been taken seriously by the Native English speakers.

One big story that really caught my eye in the story relating to the stereotyping was when her mother at the hospital at an CAT scan area and the hospital apparently lost her (Amy's mum) CAT scan and couldn't find it and they were acting very rude as they showed no sympathy as family members had died because of brain tumours or emotions or even said sorry to her about it. The hospital didn't take Amy's mum seriously and stated they would not give her any more information and had to organize another appointment to know about anything more but her daughter Amy (who is an absolute fluent speaker of the language) immediately speaks to the hospital about it and suddenly the hospital just changes their attitude, behaves more nicely and says that they had found the CAT scan. This shows the difference between a Non Native English speaker and a Native one and the difficulties and disadvantage it is being a Non Native English Speaker.

The hospital pretty much doomed her mother to not be very smart just because of her limited English speaking skills. I have to admit it but I feel like a couple of times I may have perceived someone as being more smart and intelligent just due to the quality of English they use and the words they say. Growing up in a country like Australia, there was here and there some stereotypes to people who were not native speakers of English so therefore I have been raised a little bit with how people are perceived "worse" due to not being the native speakers or having a lower level of English speaking. I think this is all FALSE, we are either raised in a native country that speaks English fluently so we catch onto it or we are not. If we are not then we have a lower chance of speaking English fluently but that should not determine that we are worse. The stereotyping is completely wrong, it is the equivalent of saying a person born and raised in Australia who speaks fluent in English goes to China. There he or she will have to speak Chinese, of course his or her Chinese will be poor and limited due to having 0 experience from learning or speaking Chinese but that doesn't make him or her less intelligent. Language is a worldwide thing, we know some languages others don't and we speak some languages better than others and some worse. Just because your English is not as good, doesn't mean you are not as intelligent as the person who is more fluent and has better English speaking skills than you.

Blog Post #1, About Me and Language

Hello to all the people who may be reading this at this time.

This is my first time making a blog so yeah.... it's quite new to me. I created this blog for my Language and Literature class in school. So my name is George Batra and I currently live in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates and I am 15 years old. I am originally Indian, my dad was born and raised there and my mother was born and raised in London but to Indian parents. I was born in Kuwait (Don't ask me why though, heaps of people ask me how the hell was I born in such an odd place) and then I grew up in Australia and UAE and I currently go to Raha International School. To talk about things I like or I love well..... I love food (I pretty much like any cuisine of food, not a fussy eater by any means), I enjoy acting (I've done a few plays the past year and also a short film which is on Youtube) and sports I enjoy playing are tennis and table tennis (some people do not consider table tennis a sport but oh well).

For my goals this year and dreams for the future... well currently I am in the DP course in the IB curriculum and I would like to just be able to get good grades and stay on top of things and not let the DP annoy me or stress to the great measures I have heard other people suffer up until. For my future... I am probably gonna do something in Business and go into real estate, that seems like a good chance it will happen but I am never 100% sure on my future ever and I am not the kind of person that has every single day for the next 100 years of his/her life planned out perfectly bit by bit but I still have a decent outlook and know my interests. Now off to the language part!

Language... the word language has been seen by almost everyone in a completely different way and we all have a different outlook and point of view on what language really is. My definition of language is that language is any form of communication between people whether it be speaking or writing or whatsoever. Language is one of the most important things that exists in this world, if there was no language this world would be going nowhere. I only speak one language English, I sadly don't speak my native language which is Hindi and I have learned Arabic and French in school for already many years now and know at least some of both languages. Language is definitely a very overlooked thing as many of us forget or oversee how language is used and how vital it is. How do we all know each other? How do we all come together? How do we all know whether we like this person or not? well language is used in order to determine an answer to all those questions. To me basically language is an art as it is such a creative tool in this world and one's imagination can see and use language in a variety of beautiful ways.

Moving on from language to culture. Culture springs right off of language, they both are interrelated with each other. Culture is another thing everyone sees and defines differently. To me culture is a country and what ever they do (what they eat, clothes they wear, rules etc). India, United States, United Arab Emirates, Australia, France, China and Nigeria are all different cultures, countries and they all speak different languages and they do things in different ways. All those countries have different kinds of foods and wear different types of clothes etc. Being in an international school for the past 6 years and travelling to over 20 countries around the world, I have been able to meet people and make friends with people from different cultures and countries and become more knowledgeable about the world. Language and Culture play a big part together, when you think about 2 people from Spain communicating with one another,you imagine both of them speaking in Spanish. I have rotated around different cultures in my life, my dad is Indian, my mother is Indian/British while I never lived in India (Only been there once like 10 years ago, so I do not even remember and feel like I have even been there!) nor England (I have been there many times though) and grew up in Australia and in UAE for most of my life so far. I don't really feel so very close to any culture, but I know a good amount of the culture in UAE, in England, in India and in Australia. Cultures differentiate us and who we are from the others, we look different, speak languages that others may not speak, be born in different countries and eat different cuisines of food but we are all one, we are all human. We all determine different cultures from different things, from people who I have met when they think of India the first thing they think is Curry, with Egypt they think of the way people dance and then with USA they think of Mcdonalds (no offense to all the Americans out there but that's the most common answer I get from people who I have met).

I'm sorry but my laptop is having troubles uploading a picture so unfortunately I cannot upload a picture of myself here.